The Others
by Truish
Summary: A failed experiment sends Heero back in time and now he has to find his way home. Probably the most random thing I've ever written, but I'm having fun with it and I think you will, too.
1. Prologue

**Pumpkin, Texas, USA  
June 20, PC 052**

Del was working in her garden, trying to encourage her lunar glories to climb a new trellis and _not _the side of her cabin, when it happened.

The night sky split open and a fiery bird shrieked death as it streaked toward the earth. Del felt the crash in her bones, for all that the thing landed deep in the woods, and shuddered all the way down to her toes.

It wasn't a phoenix, whatever it was. They were drama queens, to be sure, but they rarely burned themselves out so close to human territories. And no phoenix had ever felt so much like—_that_. So world-shaking. No, this thing, whatever it was, had been man-made.

"It's always something, isn't it?" she muttered to herself as she stood and brushed the dirt off onto her jeans. "I wonder what the government's up to this time. Damn fools, always playing with forces they don't understand."

She kicked off her shoes and ran barefoot across her lawn, leaping the barbed wire fence with ease and covering the distance across the pasture with an easy, ground-eating stride. It was harder once she got into the trees, where the woods grew unkempt and untouched, but Del knew the forest as well as she knew her own two hands. The animals had gone into hiding, even the larger predators, and Del didn't doubt that she'd find a fox or two still cowering under her porch come morning, but she kept running into the face of potential danger.

And then stopped, panting, at the edge of the crater. Something, a small plane by the looks of it, had crashed in the woods. But no ordinary plane would make a crater so deep, or a fire that burned so hot. The metal was already cherry red and melting in places. Del shook her head.

_Military, most likely_, she decided, unwilling to get so close to the thing now that she'd identified it. Most likely the pilot hadn't survived, but she supposed he could have ejected himself at the last minute. It was also possible that this thing was a drone, and unmanned. Del couldn't smell anything but smoke and, past that, the reek of displaced time.

_Time…_Del shook her head again, backing away slowly. Whatever this thing was, it was better off burned to char. Too many things went wrong when foolish people dabbled with forces beyond their comprehension.

And too few people had any true comprehension of what happened when time was displaced.

No, this thing was definitely better off destroyed. The less anyone found of it, the better. Del turned her back on the wreckage and started walking home; the night was getting old and she wanted to finish tending to her plants before she turned in.

* * *

**Notes: **Short and sweet is the way to go for a prologue, I think, even if it isn't always fair to the reader. I bet you guys are wondering where the boys are, aren't you? Other than that, let me know what you think!

Yeah, I haven't been around much in a while, but it's good to be back. Check my profile if you want to know where I've been. If you don't know who I am at all, check out my other GW stories, starting with Leap of Faith. You're in for a treat, I promise. :D


	2. Chapter 1

**Deep Space  
June 20, AC 202**

Space was cold, and dark, and utterly serene. It should have been soothing, but the complete lack of sound, of sensation, was just this side of maddening. And Heero was getting a little tired of fighting the crazies. He didn't have a whole lot left to believe in these days, not even within himself.

Life hadn't been the same since the war. _They_'d taught him everything he needed back then: how to be a pilot, a mechanic, a soldier. How to shoot a gun. How to set a charge. How to take a life.

But not how to live one.

Heero wasn't like the other pilots. They'd all found that certain thing, that spark, that kept them on the straight and narrow. Heero, on the other hand, felt like he lost a little more of his spark with every passing day. Even Preventer wasn't quite enough anymore. So when R&D announced that their newest prototype was ready for testing, Heero was the first—and most qualified—volunteer.

So far, it had been a relatively tame, even boring, mission. All that was left was the hyperdrive test, the one that should propel the ship up to faster-than-light speeds.

The one that was most likely to fail, most likely to result in his untimely—but not unanticipated—demise.

"This is test pilot Zero-One," he said into the microphone connected to the computer that would record and store his progress so the data could be recovered should the mission fail. "I've reached the designated coordinates. Engaging hyperdrive and beginning the final test phase in three—two—one."

He punched in the codes that should send the ship back to Earth, keyed in the passphrase and, almost eagerly, pressed the red hyperdrive button.

A millisecond second later he learned that of all the forces humankind had managed to harness over the years, lightspeed travel was not one of them.

Not even close.

* * *

**Pumpkin, Texas, USA  
June 23, PC 052**

Del didn't make it a habit to frequent the local watering hole, but she decided to make an exception when the owner, Jack Barnes, called her up and told her about the stray kid that had turned up at the bar.

Strays were something of a specialty for Del. She'd been a stray herself once, after all, and who knew where she might've ended up without a push in the right direction. So she sat at a table in the corner, where she could see almost the entire room without turning her head, and observed.

It wasn't hard to pick him out—Pumpkin only had about a hundred and fifty residents, and nobody from outside of town came all the way out to BFE just for Karaoke Night at Cactus Jack's.

The stranger was young-looking, but Del realized right away that he wasn't exactly a boy anymore. He was probably in his early twenties, maybe even as old as twenty-five although Del thought that estimate might be setting the bar a little high. But there was something in his eyes, that lost look deep down there, that made Del understand why Jack had called her over.

No, this one wasn't a boy. But he was definitely a stray. And she could already tell that he was going to be tricky.

"Haven't seen you in a while," Tillie, the barmaid, said as she stepped between Del and the stranger with a frosty pitcher and a bottle of Mike's on her tray. She slid the bottle across the table to Del with a practiced flick of her wrist and smiled. "That new guy's _really_ something, isn't he? I was here when he came in and, let me tell you, he's got an ass you can sink your teeth into, sister."

"Uh-huh," Del managed, trying to conceal her disapproval. Tillie said things like that about a lot of men. It didn't take an oracle to see that the silly girl was going to end up trapped in Pumpkin if she wasn't careful, stuck in a small town with some stranger's baby on her hip and no way to get herself an education or a halfway decent job. But Tillie wouldn't listen to Del.

Not that many people ever did. Del was learning to expect it, even getting to where she'd stopped giving people advice when she knew they weren't going to take it.

"You should sing tonight, Del," Tillie said, oblivious to Del's complete lack of interest in her. "Sing something for me, something that'll make John remember all the stuff we used to do together. That jerk. I still can't believe he dumped me."

Del could believe it. Tillie'd only been cheating on him with two other guys, and word got around fast in a place like Pumpkin. The fact that the other men were from Coldspring didn't change that, not when Tillie was a damn fool who couldn't keep her mouth shut.

"Tillie," Del sighed. "Don't ask me for something like that. You won't like it."

She started peeling the label off her bottle while Tillie stood there, trying to figure out what she'd meant. One thing was for certain—blonde suited the girl. She didn't have the brains for her natural brunette. Not by a long shot.

"Maybe I should just try my luck with that new guy," Tillie mused. "Even if he turns me down, it oughta make John plenty jealous. That could be fun."

"You're just looking for trouble, aren't you?" Del asked. "If you're that bored, take a night off and go stir things up down in Houston. You don't shit where you eat, Tillie."

"Are you gonna sing or not?" Tillie demanded, hardly responding to Del's needling. "Think about it, honey. Elvira just walked in and I _know_ she's gonna rupture my eardrums tonight if somebody don't take that microphone away every once in a while. Please?"

Del glanced over at the dumpy-looking woman and sighed. Elvira's outfit screamed lesbian biker chick, and she had Whitney Houston just gleaming out of those beady little eyes. Tillie wasn't going to be the only one with ruptured eardrums by the end of the night.

"I'll think about it."

Tillie squeaked gleefully and just about dropped her pitcher as she whirled around and high-tailed it back to the kitchen. Del only shook her head, amused, and sipped her drink as she studied Tillie's latest piece of eye candy.

She couldn't say for sure yet—at least not until she had a chance to inspect him up close—but something really felt _off_ about this one. But what was it?

Heero had thought things couldn't get much worse than crashing in the wilderness, losing his gun, and being stuck, injured, in a rural town with a population that consisted entirely of nosy rednecks. It had been about three days since the crash, or three days since he'd regained consciousness, anyway, and he'd heard nothing from Preventer or the researchers who, theoretically, _should _be searching for him.

Unfortunately, Preventer seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Phone calls went unanswered—even calls to his direct supervisor were bounced back as disconnected numbers, something which made absolutely no sense at all to Heero. No, it hadn't seemed like things could get worse than being lost, alone, and stranded.

But Heero had thought wrong. Even all of that wasn't as bad as his immediate situation.

It was karaoke night.

A heavyset woman with short black hair and a leather outfit that was too many sizes two small, whose name might or might not have been Elvira, was on stage for the second time that night, and her rendition of "I Will Always Love You" set Heero's teeth on edge.

But he couldn't quite force himself to get up and leave yet since he didn't exactly have anywhere else to go.

From his observations, the bar—the only business in town at all aside from a gas station-slash-grocery store—had seemed like decent shelter at night when the woods were thick with wild animals that Heero often heard but rarely saw. He couldn't afford to order anything, but he'd needed a night away from the strangeness of the forest. It was getting risky, staying in such a rural area, but Heero wouldn't be up to traveling far until the burns on his arms and legs were fully healed.

_If_ they healed. He hadn't been able to salvage anything from the crash site, not even the black box. The first aid kit was slag, indistinguishable from any other part of the twisted heap of wreckage. If the pilot ejection system hadn't been fully automated, Heero was certain he would have been melded into the ruins of the ship, too, ashes among ashes.

At least dying on impact would have been quick. Not like this infection BS.

Although he was beginning to suspect that, if this song lasted much longer, he was about to become the first documented case of death by karaoke.

Thankfully Elvira was running out of steam by the time the song ended and Heero managed to evade the reaper yet again. He tried to relax for a second, before the next song started, but then the waitress drifted over and issued herself an invitation to share his table. Heero glared at her, but she didn't take the hint.

"You're new around here," she said, tossing her bottle blonde hair over her shoulder. "What's your name, stranger?"

"What's yours?" he asked. He wasn't sure he wanted people knowing who he was, at least not until he got a better feel for the place. But the waitress didn't seem to mind that he was avoiding her question. She giggled and flipped her hair again, apparently pleased with his feigned interest in her.

"I'm Tillie," she said. "Where'd you come from? And why in the world would you come to a place like Pumpkin? First chance I get, I'm getting out of here and never looking back, I tell you what."

"Hn." Heero wasn't really listening anymore. Someone else was setting up on the makeshift stage, a tall, slender woman with red curls and a confidence about her that was somehow familiar. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Heero felt a little homesick.

"Oh," Tillie murmured, glancing up at the stage. "I wonder what Del's gonna sing tonight. She's really good, you know? She even went to Nashville once, but then she decided she didn't like all the attention she was getting and came back here. I don't see how she stands it."

Tillie kept talking, and Heero wasn't tuned her out. It was hard to hear her over the speakers for one thing and, for two, there was something interesting about the redhead. Something Heero couldn't quite put his finger on.

"All right, Tillie," she said into the microphone. "You asked for it."

_I cut my bangs with some rusty kitchen scissors,  
I screamed his name til the neighbors called the cops.  
I numbed the pain at the expense of my liver,  
I don't know what I did next, all I know, I couldn't stop._

Tillie's gasp was just loud enough for Heero to catch it during the brief pause between the verses. He spared a glance in her direction and the fury was plan on her face. Apparently she'd gotten a little more than she'd bargained for in her song request.

_Word got around to the barflies and the Baptists.  
My mama's phone started ringing off the hook.  
I can hear her now, saying she ain't gonna have it,  
Don't matter how you feel, it only matters how you look._

"Dammit, Del!"

_Go and fix your make up, girl it's just a break up,  
Run and hide your crazy and start acting like a lady  
Cause I raised you better, gotta keep it together  
Even when you fall apart.  
But this ain't my mama's broken heart._

It didn't take a genius to figure out why Tillie was pissed—other patrons had picked up on it as well, and Heero noticed a couple of people laughing. If Del had noticed the chaos she was causing, though, she kept it to herself. She really wasn't half-bad, and her boldness was at least as alluring as her voice. Even if, five minutes ago, Heero would have sworn he'd heard enough country music to last him the rest of his life.

_Wish I could be just a little less dramatic,  
Like a Kennedy when Camelot went down in flames.  
Leave it to me to be holding the matches—_

Heero couldn't catch the last line over the sound of feedback after Tillie sprang up and pulled the plug, but he definitely heard the grumbles coming from the bar's other patrons. The women argued for a moment before Del hopped lightly off the stage—a feat in itself in the heels she was wearing—and sauntered toward the exit, clearly pleased with herself.

She paused at the door to take one last glance around. Her eyes locked onto his from across the room and for a second Heero wondered if this whole thing had somehow been his fault. It wouldn't be the first time he'd unknowingly gotten caught in an argument between two women. But then she went outside, without smiling or flirting, and he decided that it had nothing to do with him.

Still…Del was interesting, and it looked like Tillie was drifting back in his direction. Heero decided that it was a good time for him to leave, too, before he really did get caught up in something that was none of his business.

* * *

**Notes: **Wow! I was not expecting to get so many reviews for the last chapter, lol! Thanks sooo much! Let me know if you're still enjoying it, okay? This is a strange one for me, mostly because I didn't sit down and plan the story out beforehand like I usually do when I write something. And also because, well, most of it is just weird for the sake of weird. I felt like I needed to get out of my box a little bit.

Song credits go to Miranda Lambert. I don't normally use so much of a song when I add lyrics to a story, but this one fit the scene really well and it makes me smile, so what the heck?

Additionally, because people have asked, Pumpkin is a real place. It really is way the heck in the middle of nowhere, and it really is that small. Cactus Jack's, to my knowledge, is not real. I'm not even trying to get anything accurate about the town, mostly to avoid accidentally invading somebody's privacy. And no, because I'm sure someone will probably ask, I don't live there.

Also, because someone asked-PC stands for pre-colony. I just didn't feel like coming up with a more complicated timeline.


	3. Chapter 2

The night air was hot and thick with humidity, so much so that Heero's burns throbbed under his clothing and hampered his movements. He had to walk carefully here; the parking lot was thick black asphalt, pitted and scarred with time and weather, the painted lines so faded that they were nearly invisible in the dark.

He couldn't afford another injury; he'd never get out of this hellhole if he took a bad step and twisted his ankle or broke a bone.

Del was watching him, saying nothing, her face too backlit from the streetlight behind her to be readable, but Heero gathered from her relaxed posture and the slight tilt of her head that she was probably more curious than afraid.

He stumbled over a badly patched pothole in the dark and swore. This was what he got for letting a woman distract him.

"You alright there?" she asked. Smoke from her cigarette wreathed her face and softly dissipated as she spoke. The effect was disorienting. "Had a few too many, huh?"

"I didn't have any," he replied, stopping a safe distance from her, just in case. She didn't move, except to take another drag off her cigarette. "But if we're being judgmental, _that_'s probably a lot worse for you than a couple of drinks."

She laughed.

"It's water vapor, sugar," she said, waving the cigarette at him. "This thing's electronic. No nicotine, no tar, none of that other shit. Just a little bit of steam. When Tillie puts me in a mood, sometimes it helps to pretend I might actually breathe fire if I wanted to."

Heero snorted, amused, and came over to lean on her truck with her. He made it a point to stay out of arm's reach, but she didn't seem like the grabby type. Not like that waitress. Tillie.

"Name's Delphina Declair," she said, switching her cigarette off and tucking it into her pocket. "Most people call me Del, and most of the time I let 'em get away with it."

"What about the rest of the time?" Heero asked, using banter to draw attention away from himself. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to tell this woman anything yet, not even his name, but he didn't want to leave until he figured out what it was about her that seemed so—familiar.

"Well, then it better be ma'am, and it better not be sarcastic," she quipped. She grinned as she said it, but her tone was serious enough that Heero didn't doubt that she meant every word. "I don't take crap from people. Specially people who oughta be smart enough to know better."

"Like Tillie?" Heero asked. Del rolled her eyes.

"That girl's as dumb as a sack of doorknobs and not half as useful; I don't expect her to know anything," she said. "No, honey, I was talking 'bout strange men who don't have the good sense to introduce themselves when they walk up to a woman outside a bar. Good lord, boy, did you forget your manners when you left the house this morning, or were you just born in a barn?"

Heero couldn't tell if she was serious or if she was hitting on him, but he got the impression that it was time to stop fooling around. He needed help if he was going to make his way back to Preventer—even if it was only so he could knock a few scientists' heads together—and if he played his cards just right, he thought he might be able to convince Del to take him to the Houston office. He could get back easily from there.

"My name is Heero Yuy," he said, extending his hand. "It's a pleasure."

* * *

Del wondered for a second if the new fellow was pulling her leg when he told her his name, but decided to shrug it off. She'd heard people name their kids stranger things, after all.

"That's better," she said, bracing herself and accepting his offered handshake.

Del didn't normally care to touch people anymore than she had to; skin-on-skin contact usually gave her a deeper glimpse of a person's timeline than she needed to see. Average people never learned to shield their minds—they didn't really need to, after all—so she was accustomed to getting a lot of unnecessary information when she came into close contact with someone.

She'd take it if it meant she could help Heero, though. He looked like he needed it, and she _had _promised Jack she'd try looking after him. But when her palm met his all she got was the sensation of incredible, searing pain. A quick glance showed her the source of the pain, and his hiss when she pushed his sleeve back confirmed that it was a recent injury and not just a lingering fragment of the past.

The burns were bad, almost all the way down to the bone. Heero tried to pull away and Del tightened her grip on his hand, not caring if she gave too much of herself away. If he brought it up later, she'd claim it was adrenaline.

"What _happened_?" she demanded.

"That's none of your business," he replied, still trying to tug himself free. It was a wonder he was moving at all, as badly as he was hurt, but Del didn't think he had a whole lot of juice left. It seemed Heero really _was_ running on adrenaline.

"Like hell it isn't," Del muttered. She half-dragged him around her truck bed, unlatched the tailgate, and forced him to sit. "Stay."

There was a first-aid kit in her toolbox, and a jar of homemade salve in the kit. Del retrieved the salve and some clean bandages and, just in case, the pearl-handled pistol that she kept in her truck for emergencies. She jammed Pearl into her waistband and marched back around the truck to where, miracle of miracles, her stray had stayed put.

"You weren't cooking drugs, were you?" she asked as she unscrewed the lid from the jar. The salve smelled terrible, and Del tried not to breathe it in as she coated a bandage in the stuff, but it worked better than anything you could buy in the store.

"No," he said flatly. "I told you, it's none of your business."

"Right," she muttered, not sure if she believed him. He was awfully defensive. He didn't _smell_ like drugs, though, and his eyes were clear enough that Del didn't think he was a user. She decided not to worry about it for the moment. If it seemed important later, well, Del had ways of getting information out of people. "This'll go a lot easier if you just hold still."

But telling a man to hold still was a lot like telling a cat to go for a swim. It was far easier to just grab hold of his arm and work around his struggling. He was too weak from the infection in those burns to put up much of a fight anyway. And the salve didn't take long to work its magic.

"What _is _that?" he asked, no longer resisting as Del wrapped a clean bandage around his right arm to keep him from smearing the sticky ointment all over her truck.

"Something my granny cooked up. Aloe vera, spearmint, a little bit of dragon's blood," Del said, shrugging. "Maybe a couple other things. Works pretty good, don't it?"

"Hn."

It was noncommittal and vague, hardly more than a grunt, but Del decided to take it as agreement and get back to what she was doing. She finished binding his left arm and wiped her greasy fingers off on her jeans. She had a feeling he'd burned more than just his arms, but she figured he could handle himself from here.

She turned her back on him and stretched lazily, giving him a moment to collect himself, waiting to see if he was going to try and escape while she had her eye off him. When she turned back around, he was watching her with a thoughtful look on his face. Del raised an eyebrow.

"Cat got your tongue?"

He grunted again and looked away. "You remind me of someone I know," he said softly. "That's all."

Del didn't want to pry anymore than she already had; she gestured for him to hop down and forced her expression still when his jaw clenched as his feet hit the asphalt. He was still hurting somewhere, but much more assistance on her part would probably lead to resentment.

Even strays had their pride, after all.

"Here." She handed the jar of salve and the rest of the bandages to him and made sure the tailgate was secure again. It didn't always latch right, and she didn't want to lose any of the supplies she had under the tarp in her truck bed. "You probably need that more than I do. Specially with that hurricane that's supposed to come through tomorrow night."

"Hurricane?" Now he sounded worried. But who wouldn't be, in his shoes? Underneath her ointment, he smelled like pine tar, dry earth, and sweat; Del didn't think he was crashing in somebody's shed. More likely he'd found a clearing somewhere and was roughing it. He looked dehydrated, too, but Del couldn't be sure that wasn't just the bad lighting. Her night vision, while better than the average person's, still wasn't perfect.

"Yup." Del ran a hand over her hair and glanced sidelong at him. "Category four, they're saying, but it'll probably go down a notch by the time it makes landfall. It'll be hard rain and wind, maybe a few tornadoes. Power'll go out for a week, maybe longer. We'll most likely see a few flash floods in low-lying areas, and parts of the woods are dried out enough that they might catch fire if a power line goes down in the wrong place. Trees are definitely going to come down. It's a strong storm for this time of year; we usually don't get the big ones until August or so. If we get any at all."

She let that sink in a minute before adding, "I'm surprised you're still out here. Most of the other campers had the sense to clear out yesterday."

She decided to go on the supposition that he was a camper, as opposed to a runaway or a vagrant, in the hope that he'd be more comfortable if he thought she assumed he had a good reason to be in the area. Maybe he'd be a little more forthcoming with information then, and Del could convince him to go home sooner rather than later.

"I was waiting for some friends who were supposed to meet me," he said. "I guess now I know why they never made it."

Del considered that a moment and wondered why his friends hadn't bothered to call him, or try and contact him some other way. It was a lie, she decided, but a good one. Either that or he needed to make some better friends.

"They'll probably be waiting in Houston now," he said thoughtfully. Del could almost see the hook he was dangling, but she wasn't going to bite.

"Sweetpea, if you're fishing for a ride down to Houston, you're just shit outta luck," she said. "The roadways are all jam packed with evacuees now, and they won't be letting just anybody in until after the storm blows over. It's gonna be at least a week, maybe two, before you can get down there. And that's if you're lucky. They're gonna get hit harder than we are; there won't be any power, or gasoline, there may not be running water, and you're gonna have a heck of a time finding a hot meal. Then of course, there's the problems they'll have with gangs and looters hitting places up while the power's out and nobody's phones work. It isn't gonna be fun, that's for damn sure."

"I can take care of myself," he argued.

_Sure you can_, Del thought sarcastically. _Like a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest_. _If you're so good at taking care of yourself, how'd you manage to set your stupid ass on fire, huh?_

"I'm sure you can," she said calmly, keeping her thoughts to herself. "There's a big storm shelter up in Huntsville that's taking people in. A lot of churches and schools are opening their doors, too. There are plenty of options to choose from, and I'm sure you'll find something, dear."

And that was that. Del dug in her pocket for her keys and hoped he'd take the bait. She couldn't force him to go with her, wouldn't even try, but given a choice between a single kind stranger and a whole crowd of them crammed into a close space, a lot of strays would take the stranger.

It was probably why so many runaways turned up dead every year. Poor kids trusted the wrong people sometimes. Del didn't like thinking about it; the idea of harming someone so fragile just turned her stomach.

"What are you going to do?"

It was all Del could do to stop herself from cheering. He hadn't agreed to anything yet, after all.

"Go home, have dinner," she said, deliberately giving him the wrong answer. "Unload all this crap out of my truck and hit the hay. I still have to board up all my windows tomorrow. It's gonna be a long day."

"For the storm," he clarified, scowling at her. His eyes were piercing, clear, and dark as the sky at sundown; they definitely weren't the eyes of a user, Del decided. And, although he was clearly lacking in common sense, he probably wasn't stupid, either.

Del shrugged. "Wait it out at home, clean up what needs cleaning up afterward, then pack up my chainsaw and head over to my granny's place. She's gonna need help getting things straight again."

Del didn't mention that her granny would have all the help she needed between Del and her cousins. She was trying to offer this fellow a place to stay, not scare him off, and Raff and Zeke could be plenty scary when they put their minds to it.

"Come to think of it, we might could use an extra pair of hands," she continued thoughtfully. "That old chainsaw gives me a heck of a time by myself, and I'd rather my granny didn't throw her back out trying to get downed tree limbs off her lawn."

Heero didn't say anything, but Del could see he was thinking about it. His face hardened—he seemed to be having some kind of internal debate—and Del decided to just take matters into her own hands, instead of trying to maneuver him into offering to go with her. He was a tough one; chances were equally good that he'd decide to go back to the woods instead of with her and she'd feel responsible if he turned up dead after the storm.

"You aren't afraid to get your hands dirty, are you?" Del asked. "It'll be more work than staying at a shelter, but I can promise you better food and a ride to Houston once it's safe. What do you say?"

He was quiet, still thinking, and Del was just about tired of waiting. She retrieved a permanent marker from her purse and pulled the cap off, preparing to scribble her number down for him in case he changed his mind, when he nodded.

"All right," he agreed. "I'll help you if you'll take me to Houston as soon as it's clear."

"We have a deal, then," Del said, putting out her hand so they could shake on it.

This time the contact was empty—no pain, no emotions, no nothing. Del had no explanation for the anomaly but, worrisome as it was, she wouldn't go back on her word. Heero was coming with her, and that was all there was to it.

* * *

**Notes: **Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed or added this to alerts, faves, etc! I hope you're still enjoying this. The story isn't moving as quickly as I'd like, unfortunately, but after debating it for a while I finally decided that this really was a good stopping point for this chapter. Anyway. Let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 3

The night was a black, uneven road, flashes of dark pine trees, and the occasional pair of oncoming headlights. It was the rushing wind and a radio blaring, and a woman singing along so sweetly that he was almost ashamed to listen.

It was an eerie sound. He'd never met any human being who sang like Del, and certainly not for an outsider like him. But there she was, undeniably flesh and blood, sitting close enough that he could smell perfume and cigarettes, and he had no idea what to do about her.

She knew too much about him, without ever having met him before. Just from the look in her eyes, Heero could tell that the woman read him like a book, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

Life would have been a lot easier if he'd died in that shuttle crash. He knew he wasn't dead. It was hot enough to be hell, but Heero hurt too much to believe he'd died three days ago.

Too bad, he decided. Better luck next time.

"Here we go," Del said, seeming much more human now that she was talking instead of singing. Her accent was country bumpkin meets bad pre-colony Western flick and it was laughably, unfortunately unaffected. Heero would have caught it long ago if she'd been faking. "It's not much, but it's home."

Home was a cabin at the end of a long gravel driveway, surrounded by plants and half-hidden behind large shade trees. The whole place had a lived-in look to it that, while it should have seemed comfortable, only served to remind Heero that he might never find a place where he belonged. With its simple country charm and well-tended garden, the cabin suited Del perfectly.

The truck shuddered to a halt next to a small green car and Del cheerfully hopped down out of the cab. Heero took his time fumbling with the latch and climbing out of the truck, trying to shake the feeling that he shouldn't have taken Del's offer of shelter. It seemed too much like admitting that he couldn't watch out for himself. But that was absurd. He'd been on his own for most of his life, definitely long enough to learn that there was nothing wrong with accepting kindness from strangers when it was offered, provided you didn't grow to rely on it.

"Watch the door," Del said. "Rose would have a fit if you scratched her new car. She's supposed to be staying at Granny's for the storm, but I told her she could leave the car here. Granny has a big ol' dead tree by her driveway and I think it's probably gonna come down in the hurricane."

Heero didn't say anything. There had been plenty of room between the truck and the unoccupied vehicle parked in the drive; he hadn't even considered it an issue until Del mentioned it.

"Well," she continued, unperturbed by his silence, "Looks like somebody left the lights on for us. Don't worry about unloading the truck; let's just go on in and get you settled. Seems like you've had a long enough day."

A long day. It had been more than just a day, but Del didn't need to know that. Heero still couldn't figure out why he'd let her talk him into coming along, except that no one from Preventer seemed to be out looking for the wrecked test ship and he didn't have anywhere else to go until he found someone willing to take him to Houston. And since a ride south seemed unlikely with a hurricane on the way, Heero thought this was probably the best shelter he was going to find.

Sticking it out in the woods was still an option, but it was one that would probably get him killed. Heero wasn't afraid of dying, was more than a little suicidal at the moment, actually, but he thought he'd prefer something a little faster than being caught out alone in the wilderness during a storm. Like a shuttle crash. Or a bullet.

"Try not to step on my plants," Del said, snapping Heero out of his morbid plans. "I know it's tricky, but you'll do fine if you stick close to me, dear."

The garden path wound back on itself several times before they reached the porch and Heero wondered if it would be any easier to navigate during the day. Heero obediently followed Del over the loose gravel, so tired now that he nearly bumped into her when she stopped short just as they got to the porch.

"Sorry," she muttered. "I knew Rose was going to drop her car off sometime, but I wasn't expecting any more company tonight. And I definitely wasn't expecting _this_."

Heero didn't have to ask what she meant. A massive wolf was stretched across the mat, blocking their way. It glared balefully at them with ice-colored eyes and bared its teeth as they approached.

"Well hi there," Del said sweetly to it. "What are you doing here so late?"

The wolf pinned its ears back and growled. Del sighed.

"It's _me_, dummy," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "Get out of the way."

Not surprisingly, the wolf didn't budge. More than ever, Heero wished he hadn't lost his gun in the crash. Del had a little pistol tucked into her waistband, but it looked like an antique. Heero didn't know if it was loaded, let alone if it would fire, so he decided that, rather than take the gun from her, his best course of action was to be patient and see how things unfolded. His situation couldn't get much worse than it already was, after all.

"I guess we'd better go in the back door," Del said, breaking off her staring contest with the wolf. "That's Rose's dog, Ash, and she doesn't always take to strange men right away. I'd hate for one of us to get bit tonight."

"Big dog," Heero said, eyeing the animal one last time as he followed Del back onto the garden path. She shrugged.

"Everything's bigger in Texas, baby."

"Right," Heero muttered. "Don't call me that."

"Anything you say, sugar."

* * *

Del bit back a snicker when Heero grunted again, clearly displeased with her endearments. He really was too easy to tease. The quiet ones were always the most fun, though.

"Can you get up the steps okay?" she asked, wondering if she should have brought the flashlight from the truck. The back porch was higher than the front, and the stairs were hard to manage in the dark. Whatever he'd done to injure his leg couldn't be helping any.

"I'm fine," he said. Del heard the thud when he stubbed his toe on an uneven step and winced. That sounded like it hurt. But if he was going to be all macho and keep it to himself, Del wouldn't call him on it.

Besides, if she picked on him too much now, it would stop being fun in a day or two. And once the storm hit and the power went out, there really wouldn't be much else to do.

"Pick your feet up, dear," she said. "That last step's a real piece of work. My cousin redid the porch for me a couple years ago and he ain't the measure twice, cut once kind of carpenter."

"Yeah," Heero replied. "I can tell."

Warning him didn't help. It never did, though. People were programmed to expect all stairs to be the same height. Even a hair's difference in a step would trip most of them up and Heero was apparently no exception to that.

But then, neither was Del. The only reason she managed these steps as easily as she did was because she'd stubbed her toes on them about a hundred times already.

Raff had also done the work on the back door when he redid the porch. Consequently, the door had to be lifted before the deadbolt would slide straight and if you didn't jiggle the key just right, well, you might as well pitch a tent and sleep in the yard.

"This is what happens when you hire people who'll work for beer," she grumbled as she wrestled the door.

"I guess next time you'll know better," Heero said, standing back and watching as Del tried to lift the door and work the key into place at the same time. She rolled her eyes. A polite person would have offered to help.

"No," she said. "Next time I just won't pay him in advance. I figure maybe he'll put his whole ass into the job if he's sober enough."

Apparently Heero didn't know how to take a joke. Either that or Raff's drunk as a skunk attempts at home improvement weren't nearly as funny as Del always thought they were. She shook her head—some people were entirely too serious—and stopped pretending to fight with the door. Hopefully all the noise she'd made had been enough to alert Rose that she had company.

Or not.

The lights were on but no one was home. The house felt empty, and Del thought Rose must have left some time ago. She found the note scribbled on the pad she used for her grocery lists.

_Ash wasn't getting along with the boys. Hope you don't mind her spending the night. Zeke and Raff are coming by in the morning to board up your windows and they can bring Ash back when they're done._

_Love,  
Rose_

_P.S. I raided your chocolate stash. Hope you don't mind._

"Cute." Del muttered. She tossed the note into the trash and turned back to Heero. "All right, let's see what we can do to get you settled. Hopefully without any more unwelcome surprises."

* * *

The closer the storm got, the heavier the air became. It was an ominous feeling, to be sure, but not ominous enough to keep Del from exploring outdoors once her guest was settled and asleep. Heero looked so much younger when he slept, more a troubled boy than a troubled young man, and it took a lot of self control to leave him be. Hovering would drive him further away when Del only wanted to see him back on his feet and safely home, wherever his home happened to be. This little venture was as much to give him some breathing room as to take Ash for a run in the dark woods. Thoughtlessly, she drifted toward the new, burned-out clearing, but there were no new secrets to be found. There was just the twisted wreckage of a crashed plane, and the toxic reek of displaced time.

"Smell that," Del said softly, alert and tense in the dark forest. "That's time, Ash. It means—well, I don't know what it means, but I don't think it's a good thing.

"We all have a timeline," Del continued. "Everything on this planet—you and me, the trees, even the rocks and mountains—has its own thread, and as we interact with one another, our threads weave themselves together into this fabric that we call existence. Something's torn a hole in the fabric here, and that's what's making that awful smell. Sorry. I can't explain it any better than that. I don't really understand it myself."

Ash flicked an ear, but it was only an indication that she was listening. She'd always been the quiet type, though, even when she walked on two feet instead of four.

The forest was eerily silent around the crash site, and it had been for the last three days. Animals instinctively avoided the place and humans apparently had yet to notice it. Del was drawn to it like a moth to candlelight, though, possibly because she fell somewhere in between those categories. Or more probably because she'd always had more guts than sense.

It was the same reason she was drawn to castoffs and runaways, too. No common sense. That was what her granny had always said.

"You mark my words, Delphina," the old woman warned whenever Del came around with a stray in tow, "Those kids are gonna get you in some kind of trouble one of these days. And you'd better not drag the rest of us down with you."

Granny was always fussing about that. Del or her brothers bringing trouble down on their oddball family, as if their unorthodox ways weren't troublesome enough.

Up until now, Del had never worried about that. But this one—Heero—was different. He was sharp-eyed and he'd notice if she did too much out of the ordinary. Del straightened, thinking of her stray, and decided that it was time to head back before he woke and noticed she was gone.

"Come on, Ash."

It was a minute's run back to the house, a race with the wolf that turned into a dead-on sprint when her sharp ears picked up a cry cutting through the stillness. This time there were no games; Del flew up the steps and unlocked the door with swift fingers. But when she got to the guest room, there were no signs of real danger.

There was only a boy having a nightmare.

"Poor thing," Del whispered. She edged closer to the bed, warily, in case he woke up and was unhappy at finding her in his room. Ash hunkered in the doorway, growling softly, making her disapproval clear without needing words.

"Get on back in the other room," she told Ash quietly. "We don't want to wake him up if we don't have to."

He was restless, gasping and thrashing under the quilt, locked in the throes of Del didn't know what. She knelt by the bed and gently, gently brushed his hair back from his sweaty face.

It was odd, even when he was sleeping and defenseless, that Del couldn't pick up echoes of Heero's timeline when she touched him. His present state was all helpless rage and fear, no doubt from whatever plagued his dreams, but he had no discernible past as far as Del could sense. And no future, either, although that wasn't exactly uncommon with runaways.

That was okay, though. Del's past had also been erased. She knew what it was like to have to start from scratch, to have to weave yourself back into the fabric of time and build yourself a new future. New memories. Even a new family.

Heero's thrashing eased, but his breathing stayed ragged and uneven. The nightmares were reluctant to let this one go; his inner demons had grown strong over time. But there was no nightmare, no demon, that could stand against Del for long. She traced her finger down from Heero's hairline to his temple and started to hum.

It was a wordless, worldless tune, one she'd been born knowing, a song that had persisted even through injury and amnesia. But more than that, or perhaps because of that, for Del it was a song of peace. A song that always chased the darkness away.

Heero stilled. Del kept humming, looping her song into itself as his breathing regulated and his rapid pulse slowed. She started to pull away and froze when he grabbed for her in the dark. He was fast—for a human.

"Mom?"

Del almost chuckled in relief. He wasn't really awake, the poor boy. She reached for him again, gently breaking his hold on her arm, and ruffled his fingers through his damp hair.

"Sleep," she murmured. "Go back to sleep. You just had a bad dream, that's all."

"Relena?" He sounded more awake this time, though not fully aware. His voice was thick with exhaustion.

"Rest," Del whispered. "Save it for tomorrow."

She _leaned _on him a little then, even though her granny would be furious if she ever found out, matching her breathing to his and then gradually slowing it, relaxing her muscles, acting as if she prepared her own body for sleep. In his exhausted, injured state, he vulnerable enough that he picked up on it unconsciously, and he quickly drifted off.

Del waited until she was sure he wouldn't wake before she climbed back to her feet and turned her attention to the girl standing in the doorway. Rose would have a fit if she saw her daughter in this state, with her white-blonde hair snarled and dirty, her nails torn and filthy, but Rose wasn't here and Del thought it was too late to fuss over a little mess. It was enough that _something_ had inspired Ash to come out of her shell, so to speak, for the first time in weeks.

"Akeela's gonna be pissed when she finds out," Ash said, the words slurring as if speech had grown unfamiliar to her. "Why'd you do it, Del?"

Del followed the girl out of the room and into the hall, shutting the door behind her. Ash led the way to the living room, bare-ass naked and wolfish even on two legs. The girl was going to the wild, but there was nothing Del could do about that. It was the alpha's job to keep pack members from going feral, and Del had been barred from interfering.

"I did it because it was the right thing to do," Del replied. "I won't leave anybody to suffer, Aislinn, no matter what your alpha demands. I'm no wolf, and I'll be damned if I submit to her now. My pack is the human pack, same as yours should be."

"That's ironic," Ash said as she dropped to all fours on the living room rug. "Since you're the least human of us all."

Ash shuddered as the change rippled over her skin, and the white wolf took over again. Del turned her back on the wolf-girl, as the conversation was clearly over and she owed her uninvited guest no respect.

* * *

Notes: Whew! Finally! I didn't think I was ever going to get this finished. The biggest problem, I think, was that I hate having the same character narrate two scenes in a row. There were other issues, and this still feels like a rough draft in a lot of ways, but I think it's good enough to post. Please let me know what you think! I haven't ever written anything with such a supernatural vibe before, and I'd like to know now if I'm confusing anyone.


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